Henderson. “It is like hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. There are a score and more of islands--to say nothing of cays--and although he started south we have no means of knowing how soon he may have shifted his course. Why, even now, he may be over in Santo Domingo, Cuba or Tortuga or he may have turned east to St. Barts or Barbuda. If we went to every island we would be here for the next year.”

“I’ll say we would!” laughed Rawlins. “But we don’t need to. Once we pick up his trail and know his course it’ll be easy. A fellow can’t fly far in any direction without being in sight of an island and if we lose him we can easily find his trail again by calling at an island or two.”

“Sounds easy, I admit,” remarked Mr. Henderson rather sarcastically. “But what is to prevent him from going straight across to South America for example? Then we’d have a nice job trying to find where he landed--I suppose we’d have to hunt the entire northern coast of the continent.”

“I expect you’re jollying me a bit,” replied the diver, “but honest Injun you know he couldn’t make a nonstop flight to South America from here and if he took a course for there our job would be all the easier. There are only a few islands between here and South America, in a direct line you know. I think the best place to ask will be Statia or St. Croix. Then, if they haven’t seen or heard him, we can swing to the east to St. Kitts or St. Barts.”

“I’m backing your hunch you know, Rawlins,” asserted Mr. Pauling, “and if you say St. Croix first, St. Croix it is. We’re outside now and we’d better give Commander Disbrow his course.”

“Well, I guess we’ll make it Statia first,” replied Rawlins after a moment’s thought. “It’s the nearest and in nearly a direct line with the course he took. Besides, the Dutch captain of the tramp may still be in the hospital there. If he is we can see him and maybe pump some information from him. Perhaps, if he knows his ship’s gone to Davy Jones and the others have skedaddled he’ll come across with a confession to clear his own skirts.”

“Yes, that’s a good scheme,” agreed Mr. Pauling. “We’ll make Statia first then.”

The two boys had thought St. Thomas and St. John fascinating and beautiful, but as the towering volcanic cone of St. Eustatius or “Statia” as it is more often called, rose above the sea with the far reaching, rich green hills and cloud-piercing, frowning heights of St. Kitts to the east, they could only gaze in rapt admiration and declared they had never seen anything so wonderful or beautiful.

“Wait until you see the other islands,” said Rawlins, laughing at the boys’ excited exclamations of delight. “Why, St. Kitts over there isn’t anything compared to Dominica or Martinique and as for Statia--well of course it looks high and it’s striking because it’s small and the cone is so perfect in shape, but it’s no bigger than little St. John and it would be only a hill on Guadeloupe or Dominica.”

“Gee, I hope the old seaplane went everywhere so we can see all the islands,” declared Tom. “It’s a shame we are down here and won’t see those you talk about.”

“Maybe we will,” said the diver. “At any rate, we’re bound to see some of them, but look over there to the west. See that big cone sticking up to the right of Statia? Well that’s the strangest island in the West Indies if not in the world. It’s Saba.”

“But no one lives there!” complained Frank, who was studying the conical mass of rock rising abruptly for a thousand feet above the sea.

“Don’t they!” exclaimed Rawlins. “I’ll say they do! But you can’t see ’em or their houses from the sea. Saba’s just a big volcano--dead of course. The town’s in the crater--about eight hundred feet above the sea. It’s called ‘Bottom.’ The people are Dutch and speak English and if you visited ’em you’d have to climb a stairway cut in the rocks with eight hundred steps. And I’ll bet my boots to a herring you can’t guess what the folks who live up in that crater do for a living.”

“No, but I should think they might make balloons or airplanes,” replied Tom.

“’Twould be more appropriate,” agreed Rawlins, “but instead they make boats! Carry the lumber up that stairway--it’s called ‘The Ladder’--build the boats in the crater and lower ’em over the mountain side just as if they were launching ’em from a ship.”

“Oh, you’re just kidding us!” declared Tom, “That’s too big a yarn!”

“True, nevertheless,” his father, who had drawn near, assured him. “I’ve heard of it before.”

“’Course it’s true!” avowed the diver. “And there are a lot of other blamed funny things about Saba that are true. All the folks keep their coffins in their houses and look after ’em just like the other furniture and most of the young men are sailors. I know two or three who are mates of big transatlantic liners. And the town’s so high up they can grow potatoes and strawberries and such things there.”

“But who do they sell them to?” asked Frank.

“Take ’em over to St. Kitts mostly,” Rawlins told him.

“Well, I’d like to go there,” declared Tom. “Don’t you suppose they saw the airplane? If they’re so high up, they might have got a good view of it.”

“Sure they might,” agreed Rawlins. “But if they did, the folks on Statia did too, and it’s no easy job landing at Saba--no dock or harbor--just a tiny strip of pebbly beach among the rocks. It’s impossible to go ashore if there’s any sea running.”

“I call that too bad!” said Frank. “I suppose there’s nothing very odd or interesting about Statia.”

“Well, I guess it’s not so interesting as Saba,” admitted the diver. “But it’s pretty interesting if you know it’s history. It’s the first place where the American flag was saluted and during the Revolutionary War it was the richest and busiest port in the world. And the biggest auction the world’s ever seen was held there. You’ll not see any ships or warehouses to speak of at Orange Town now, but you’ll see the remains of the old ones.”

“Then why was it given up?” asked Tom.

“’Twasn’t!” laughed Rawlins. “At least, not purposely. You see, during the Revolution, Statia, being Dutch and a free port, was used as a clearing place for the French, British, and Americans. It was neutral, and all the goods going in or out of the West Indies were sent there and stored until called for by ships. But the English sent a warship and seized everything, and then auctioned off the whole lot--ships and merchandise both--and of course, the business was never resumed.”

“How do you happen to know so much about all these places, may I ask?” inquired Mr. Henderson. “You seem to be a sort of walking gazetteer of the West Indies.”

Rawlins chuckled. “Well, you see,” he answered, “father was a sea captain before he took to salvage work and I used to go on trips with him from the time I was a kid, knee high to a grasshopper. His old hooker had a West Indian trade route and I saw nearly all the islands and what I didn’t see for myself he told me about. Then, when I took to diving I got a lot of work down here.”

“Ah, I understand,” said Mr. Henderson. “And, knowing the islands so well, could you suggest any one--or several--which would be suitable as landing places for that plane?”

“Sure,” replied the diver. “He could land at pretty nearly any of them--or rather near them. There are long stretches of uninhabited coast on all. Even Barbados, which is the most densely inhabited, has plenty of places where a plane could slip in and none be wiser--only they’d see him coming and run like blazes to watch him come down. No, I don’t expect he’ll try landing near any of the big islands. More likely he’d pick some small cay or outlying islet--there